The architect of Arizona’s controversial anti-immigration law, Russell Pearce, lost a major recall election Tuesday night, becoming the first Arizona state senator ever to do so. He is required to step down immediately and will be replaced by newly elected Republican Jerry Lewis. Pearce wrote Senate Bill 1070, which requires police to investigate the immigration status of people they have lawfully detained. He was also behind an effort...

Since President Barack Obama took office, a broad, international coalition against has formed against the planned Keystone XL pipeline, intended to run from the tar sands of Alberta, Canada, to the Gulf Coast of Texas. Now the deadline for its approval or rejection is at hand.

Advocates for labor, women’s and immigration rights are celebrating a number of key victories in Tuesday’s state elections. In Ohio, voters defeated Republican Gov. John Kasich’s controversial limits on the collective bargaining rights of state employees. In Arizona, Russell Pearce, the architect of the state’s controversial anti-immigration law has lost his state senate seat in an unprecedented recall vote. Meanwhile,...

Republican presidential candidate Herman Cain has strongly rejected sexual harassment allegations against him, saying they "simply didn’t happen," and vowing not to withdraw from the 2012 presidential race. On Tuesday, Cain denied the claims of his latest accuser, Sharon Bialek, who said Cain groped her and tried to force her to commit a sexual act in 1997. Also Tuesday, another woman, Karen Kraushaar, confirmed publicly for...

Voters in Mississippi have overwhelmingly defeated an amendment to establish that a fertilized human egg is a person, despite support for the measure from the Republican and Democratic candidates for governor. If passed, it would have made Mississippi the first state to grant constitutional rights to embryo from the moment of conception. We speak with Diane Derzis, owner of Mississippi’s only abortion clinic, the Jackson Women’s...

After an Election Day that saw a number of wins for progressive causes nationwide, activists opposed to "corporate personhood" — the notion that corporations have equal rights to individuals — are pushing ahead with a campaign to add a 28th amendment to the U.S. Constitution that would reject the idea that corporations are people and reverse the 2010 landmark case Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission. In a 5-to-4 vote, the...

The campaign of Republican presidential hopeful Herman Cain took another hit on Monday when a fourth woman emerged to accuse him of sexual harassment in the 1990s. But the allegations of sexual harassment are not the only controversies surrounding Cain. Also on Monday, the Wisconsin-based Center for Media and Democracy filed a complaint asking the Internal Revenue Service to investigate whether one of his top aides has used tens of thousands...

While President Obama has made concession after concession to both the corporate-funded tea party and his Wall Street donors, now that he is again in campaign mode, his progressive critics are being warned not to attack him, as that might aid and abet the Republican bid for the White House. Enter the 99 percenters.

A new report by the Brennan Center for Justice warns changes to voting laws could strip the voting rights of more than five million people—a higher number than the margin of victory in two of the last three presidential elections. Its findings reveal some 3.2 million people in Kansas, South Carolina, Tennessee, Texas and Wisconsin do not have the state identification they will now need to vote. Others will be kept from the voting booth by...

Democracy Now! co-host Juan Gonzalez writes in the NY Daily News that the idea that local post offices, the most visible neighborhood presence of our national government for more than 200 years, face financial default on Sept. 30 is truly astounding. Yet, that’s exactly what will happen unless the politicians in Washington act quickly.